webgl-globe

WebGL Globe is an open-source JavaScript project from the Google Data Arts Team that lets you display geographic data on a spinning, interactive 3D globe inside a web browser. WebGL is a technology built into modern browsers that allows drawing 3D graphics without any plugins, and this project puts it to work as a map that users can rotate and explore.

The way it works is straightforward: you prepare a JSON file containing sets of latitude, longitude, and magnitude values, where magnitude controls how tall a spike or marker appears at a given location on the globe. You can include multiple named data series in one file, so you could show, say, population figures alongside internet usage on the same globe. The library then reads that file, places the data points on the globe, and starts animating.

The code is built on top of Three.js, a popular JavaScript library that handles the lower-level 3D rendering work. You do not need to know Three.js directly to use WebGL Globe; the project provides its own simpler API where you create a globe, attach it to a container element on your web page, load your data, and call animate.

The project is designed to be copied and customized. The Google Data Arts Team built it as a platform for experimentation and shared a gallery of globes made by others. If you have location-based data and want a visually interesting way to display it on a website, this gives you a starting point without requiring deep graphics programming knowledge.

The README is short and the project scope is narrow: it does one thing, which is rendering magnitude data on a globe. There is no mention of server-side components, authentication, or complex configuration.